Diabetes figures all set to blow out by 2050
Researchers who carried out a study of diabetes are predicting that by the year 2050 there will be 39 million with the disease in the United States.
They have based their estimate on the figures for prevalence and incident in the period between 2000 and 2004 which show a steady rise in the national incidence of diagnosed diabetes.
This projection represents 9.3 million more people with diagnosed diabetes than previously thought.
U.N. launches “Unite for Diabetes” campaign
The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) launched its “Unite for Diabetes” campaign this week here at the Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association, urging global support of the United Nations Resolution on diabetes.
The U.N.’s resolution aims to raise awareness of the global burden of diabetes, and officials are calling for worldwide governmental support of this effort.
New figures announced by the International Diabetes Federation show that diabetes affects 230 million people, approximately 6 percent of the world’s adult population. Seven of the ten countries with the highest prevalence are in the developing world.
Roulette wheel can aid treatment decisions
Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles have developed a tool that they hope will help ease the burden of making difficult treatment decisions. It’s a roulette wheel that allows patients to visualize the probable outcomes associated with different treatment options for different diseases.
The roulette wheel can be adapted to represent any current clinical question and is based on “best current evidence,” according to its developers, Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman and colleagues.
For illustration purposes, Hoffman and colleagues describe inn the journal PLoS Medicine how a healthy 65-year-old man might use the roulette wheel to decide whether or not to be screened for prostate cancer with a standard PSA blood test.
Folic acid may be the new cancer prevention therapy
According to a new study supplements of folic acid may help prevent cancer.
Italian researchers enrolled 43 patients with untreated laryngeal leucoplakia and treated them with folic acid (5mg three times a day) and evaluated the progression of leucoplakia every 30 days for six months.
Leucoplakia appears as white patches in the mucus membranes of the mouth or throat, and can contain precancerous cells.
Physicians can’t ethically interrogate prisoners
Psychiatrists and other physicians should not help the military or police to interrogate prisoners, according to a new report from the American Medical Association’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA).
Helping to plan or monitor prisoner interrogations with the “intention of intervening in the process” are actions outside the bounds of ethical behavior, CEJA said here Sunday.
Dr. Priscilla Ray of Houston, who serves as chair of CEJA said: “Physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation, because a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician’s role as a healer and thereby erodes trust in the individual physician interrogator and in the medical profession.”
Are we over-dosing on antibiotics?
Dutch researchers say that a three day course of antibiotics is just as effective as the usual seven to 10 days course when it comes to treating common pneumonia.
The researchers believe that a shorter course of antibiotic treatment may also help curtail the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Lead researcher Dr. Jan M Prins, an internist in infectious diseases at the Academic Medical Center, in Amsterdam says it appears that three days of medication is sufficient in children, and it now appears to be the same for adults with mild to moderate-severe community acquired pneumonia.
Clues Help Identify Psychological Seizures
Up to 30 percent of those diagnosed with epilepsy don’t actually have the disorder. They have psychological nonepileptic seizures, or psychogenic seizures, that are caused by psychological conditions, not by the abnormal electrical activity in the brain that causes epileptic seizures.
Because these nonepileptic seizures are similar to epileptic seizures, they can be difficult to diagnose. Three new studies published in the June 13, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, may help make that diagnosis easier.
“The need for an accurate diagnosis early on is crucial,” said neurologist Selim Bendadis, MD, of the University of South Florida in Tampa, who wrote an editorial accompanying the studies. “Right now there is an average of seven to nine years from the time someone first has these seizures and when they are correctly diagnosed with psychological nonepileptic seizures. During that time, they are given drugs for epilepsy that do not treat their problem and they undergo repeated testing - they pay a price physically, socially and financially.”
Coffee Drinking Associated with Lower Risk for Alcohol-Related Liver Disease
Drinking coffee may be related to a reduced risk of developing the liver disease alcoholic cirrhosis, according to a report in the June 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Cirrhosis progressively destroys healthy liver tissue and replaces it with scar tissue. Viruses such as hepatitis C can cause cirrhosis, but long-term, heavy alcohol use is the most common cause of the disease in developed countries, according to background information in the article. Most alcohol drinkers, however, never develop cirrhosis; other factors that may play a role include genetics, diet and nutrition, smoking and the interaction of alcohol with other toxins that damage the liver.
Arthur L. Klatsky, M.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, Calif., analyzed data from 125,580 individuals (55,247 men and 70,333 women) who did not report liver disease when they had baseline examinations, between 1978 and 1985. Participants filled out a questionnaire to provide information about how much alcohol, coffee and tea they drank per day during the past year. Some of the individuals also had their blood tested for levels of certain liver enzymes; the enzymes are released into the bloodstream when the liver is diseased or damaged.
Family cat unlikely to give baby Johnny asthma
Exposure during infancy to pets or airborne “allergens,” such as house dust mites and Timothy weed, does not seem to increase the likelihood a child will develop airway hyperresponsiveness—a hallmark of asthma in which the lungs overreact to pollen, dust or other airborne particles by closing up tiny airways.
Dr. Elizabeth C. TePas and colleagues from the Channing Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston report their findings in the current issue of the medical journal CHEST.
The investigators looked for ties between early life factors and airway hyperresponsiveness in a group of 131 children who had at least one parent with a history of asthma or allergies, placing the children at heightened risk for asthma and allergies.
Defibrillators can increase heart failure risk
Implanted cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) can improve the survival rates of carefully selected patients with chronic heart disease by 30 percent to 54 percent. However, investigators have found that ICDs also appear to increase the risk of heart failure.
ICDs are recommended for patients who have had a near-fatal episode of irregular heart rhythm, also referred to as an arrhythmia, and who have a high risk of another episode. The devices are designed to detect arrhythmias, where the heart beats too slowly or too rapidly, and to deliver a shock to restore normal rhythm.
Dr. Ilan Goldenberg, at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, and his associates reviewed the records of 1,197 patients who had an ICD. The investigators analyzed the factors associated with the progression to heart failure.
When it comes to diabetes doctors failing to follow ‘doctors orders’
According to the latest reports when it comes to diabetes and following doctors orders, doctors are failing their patients.
The results of four completely independent studies presented at the American Diabetes Association’s Annual Scientific meeting, indicate that doctors are failing to prescribe higher dose therapy in people with type 2 diabetes and high blood glucose levels or high blood pressure.
The findings imply that a lack of action on the part of doctors may be an important barrier to effective diabetes management.
